On Jan. 3, the Vancouver Canucks hosted the Boston Bruins on Hockey Night in Canada for their second matchup of the season. The last time they met, the Canucks walked away with a 5-4 shootout win in Boston. This one also needed extra time, but not the shootout, as Fraser Minten scored two goals, including the late overtime winner, to send his Bruins to a 3-2 victory in his hometown.
Minten and Elias Lindholm scored for the Bruins. Jeremy Swayman made 31 saves.
Elias Pettersson and Filip Hronek scored for the Canucks. Kevin Lankinen made 18 saves.
Game Recap
The first 14 minutes of the opening period were back-and-forth with very few whistles. Then, Marcus Pettersson took two penalties at 14:46, one for high-sticking David Pastrnak and the other for tripping Pavel Zacha, to put the Bruins on a four-minute power play. The Bruins capitalized at 16:24 on a goal by Minten for the first power-play marker of his career. The Vancouver native snapped his seventh from the slot by Lankinen to open the scoring and put the Bruins up 1-0. That’s how the period ended, with the shots 6–5 Bruins.
The second period saw three goals, two by the Canucks, and one by the Bruins. First, the Canucks tied the game just 48 seconds in on Pettersson’s 10th of the season. Then, the Bruins took the lead again on the power play, with Lindholm tipping in a Pastrnak pass. Finally, the Canucks tied it at two late on the power play, on Hronek’s third, as his shot hit Charlie McAvoy and deflected past Swayman.
The third period didn’t see any scoring, and this one needed overtime to decide a winner. It looked like the shootout was in the cards again, but Minten made sure it didn’t get to Lankinen’s forte, collecting a loose puck in front of him and shoveling in his second of the game to cap the Bruins’ 3-2 win.
The Canucks outshot the Bruins 33-21 and went 1-for-6 on the power play, while the Bruins went 2-for-3.
Up Next
The Canucks will begin a six-game Eastern road trip on Tuesday against the red-hot Buffalo Sabres, who recently had their 10-game winning streak snapped by the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Bruins, meanwhile, will head down the highway to Seattle to face the Kraken in the final stop of their five-game road trip.
